Washington, D.C. – Today, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet released the following statement on the Inflation Reduction Act:
“Washington has spent decades cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and exploding our deficit instead of making responsible choices for our future. The Inflation Reduction Act represents a historic break from those failed policies. It will lower the costs of energy, health care, and prescription drugs for Coloradans. It makes the largest investment ever to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on foreign, oil-rich dictators. It adopts my proposal to ensure the biggest corporations finally pay their fair share. And unlike Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, this bill is not only paid for — it reduces the federal deficit by over $300 billion. We have to get this done for Colorado and the country.”
BACKGROUND:
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will make the largest investment to fight climate change in history, reduce our deficit, lower costs and help fight inflation for hard-working Coloradans.
As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Bennet has championed the long-term extension and expansion of the clean energy tax credits in the IRA and the incentives for domestic clean energy manufacturing for wind, solar, and batteries. The IRA also includes an array of his priorities to cut methane emissions, reform oil and gas leasing, invest in carbon capture, and support rural communities in the transition to clean energy. He helped write the IRA’s 15% Corporate Minimum Tax on the country’s 200 richest corporations, which will raise nearly half of the revenue to pay for the bill.
The IRA will help lower health care and prescription drug costs for Coloradans by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and extending the American Rescue Plan health insurance premium support for three years for over 100,000 Coloradans. Bennet proposed these reforms in his Medicare-X public option bill. It will also cap prescription drug costs for seniors at $2,000 per year and prevent pharmaceutical companies from egregious price hikes for drugs.
As the Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry and Natural Resources and Chair of the Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure, Bennet has pushed to make major investments in our forests and agricultural economy to help confront climate change. The IRA will invest more than $20 billion in working lands conservation measures and $5 billion to restore the health of our forests to prevent wildfires, modeled after his Outdoor Restoration Partnership Act. At Bennet’s urging, the bipartisan infrastructure law also made a major investment in our forests – for a combined historic $10 billion investment in our forests.